Hundreds of schools were shut in the last week of January as over 11,000 teachers went on strike for higher salaries and larger school budgets. The government has agreed a 4 percent pay raise for teachers in 2016 following a 5 percent raise for the past three years. But the protesters, who made up about 12 percent of all teachers in the country, say it is too little. Many teachers work two jobs to make ends meet. Schools lack money to buy proper teaching aids. The unions have announced that the strike will continue until the requests are met. The education ministry sent a calculation to the media that the average teacher makes €997 per month.
English: http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-slovakia-education-strike …
http://spectator.sme.sk/c/20077765/strike-will-close-schools.html
For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.